


all that's best of dark and bright

by ALsannan



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALsannan/pseuds/ALsannan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set before Daredevil starts, when Elektra and Matt first meet. </p><p>A character study of Elektra and her relationship with Matthew and with Stick, back when Stick was a father figure and Matthew was a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all that's best of dark and bright

**Author's Note:**

>    
> Credit for the title goes to the Lord Byron poem "She Walks in Beauty" which I find at once strangely applicable to Elektra and also deeply hilarious to read with her in mind.

It takes awhile, to accept the story. Every little girl thinks she’s the princess, the heroine, the good one. Elektra clings to that, at first. It isn’t until she’s fifteen that she accepts the truth.

She’s no hero.

It was always clear. The truth is inconvenient that way. She’s not the type for sacrifice, for selflessness. She wants, and she takes, and _god_ she wants…so much more than what she’s got, so much more than what she deserves, than what she can ask for, more, more, always more wanting, wanting so badly that it keeps her up at night.

She’d kill for what she wants. She’d bleed.

Heroes don’t do that sort of thing.

You’re not supposed to want things, when you’re the good guy. You’re not supposed to need anything.

She needs the kill.

It’s her only constant. She doesn’t have parents (not really), and she doesn’t have Stick (not really), and she doesn’t have a home, or a dream, or a city she belongs to (not really)

...but she has need.

Late at night, when her stomach gnaws and her blood is too bright for her skin, need is the only thing that feels like it’s hers.

 

* * *

 

The first time she meets Matthew Murdock, she’s staring at his shoes.

Of course, she knows him already. Knows his father’s name, and his grade on his sixth grade spelling test, and the kind of cereal he likes in the morning. He’s a mission. She knows him.

It doesn’t escape her notice that Stick never quite forgot these details about him. The man who’s never told her her real last name (because he never learned it) still remembers the favorite ice cream flavor of a little boy he knew for less than a year, over a decade ago, and it _burns_. It burns that Stick remembers these things about him and it burns that he never even bothered to know them about her.

Wingtips. They’re probably the only pair of nice shoes the boy has.

She wants to spit on those shoes. Just to see what he’d do. This Matthew Murdock, who won Stick over without _sight_. Matthew Murdock, who at least _had_ a parent to lose. Matthew Murdock, who has _an actual friend_ to wink at and send a thumbs-up to as he crosses the room towards her…

..and then she sees his face.

That dimple. The slow smile. The easy charm. The innocence he can’t quite shake off, even though she can tell he’s tried.

She looks at him and her mind says: _mission_ but her stomach says: _need_.

 

* * *

 

“I met him."

There's always static over the line when she calls Stick. It’s strange, talking to him over the phone. He doesn’t belong to the modern world. There’s something fundamentally wrong about him being reachable by email. An absurd vision of him at a Verizon wireless arguing about unlimited texting suddenly fills her mind, tingeing her voice with laughter.

“Frankly, I think this is a waste of time. I don’t understand what you see in him.”

There’s a lie in her voice, but it’s the truth too. She wonders if Stick can hear one or both.

“He’s important, Ellie.”

She considers slamming the phone down. She wonders if he’s ever said the same words about her to someone else, wonders if she’s ever been a mission.

“Maybe your affection for him has _blinded_ you.”

It’s childish and beneath her and it feels fantastic. He doesn’t respond to her taunts. He never has and suddenly that makes her angry too. She wants to hang up on him first, for once.

He beats her to it, but not before he issues his last order.

“Just get it done.”

 

* * *

 

She’s not sure if the problem is with Matthew, or with her, or with Stick and his pointless war, but all of that is a lie because she knows _exactly_ what the problem is.

Matthew Murdock shines so brightly his light reaches all her dark corners.

She’s _happy_. _Actually_ happy. Not contented, or self-satisfied, or any lesser version of the real emotion she’s ever encountered before. Really, _genuinely,_ happy.

Sometimes, she thinks all she needs to live is the sight of that dimple sinking into his cheek when he laughs. Sometimes, she thinks the only way she’ll survive this is if she goes far enough away that she forgets New York City even exists.

It’s a bitter irony that she’s fallen in love, when she’s long considered herself fallen.

Things happen. Things no one ever warned her about. The tip of her nose tingles when he looks at her. She actually _enjoys_ sleeping on a futon. She stops in a crowd, just to feel the sun on her face.

At night, when she's staring at the ceiling of Matthew’s dorm room with his arm around her waist and his snores in her ear, she searches her mind for all those black holes at the edges, the places too dark and too deep to enter. She can’t find them. The shadows are gone. The demons are vanquished.

She misses them.

 

* * *

 

“You’ve been here too long, Ellie.”

Stick doesn't even look at her. He’s staring out at the city lights. Here from her penthouse on the 80th floor you can almost see them all, so numerous they could be stars; a whole other universe, below instead of above.

“He’s a harder sell than I thought,” Elektra lies through her teeth, heels clicking across her marble floor.

“Bullshit.”

She doesn’t see him move until she’s laid out on the floor. He stands over her, stick still in his hand, smug look on his face, and a wave of hatred rolls over her. It propels her to her feet, sends her snarling across the room. He dodges her leg easily, but doesn’t expect her uppercut. She follows him as he stumbles, managing a jab to his nose, but then the stick is out again and it’s everywhere; her neck, her back, the soft joint of her arm. She feels it come down across her face. The blow stuns.

The city lights outside blink in and out of focus. Blood bubbles in the cut across her cheek.

“I warned you about this, Ellie.”

Rage turns her vision red and black. The lights outside the window wink out of existence.

“I’m not your little Ellie anymore," she hisses.

Stick sizes her up; a slow, long look she doesn’t like one bit. Then, he speaks, and she wishes he’d kept looking, taken another swing at her, left her all alone in the world. Anything, but say what he says.

“You never were.”

 

* * *

 

Matthew _does_ shine bright. Like a star. Like the sun. Powerful enough to turn night to day. Powerful enough to burn.

It’s warm here, in his dorm room, circled in the protection of his arms.

Every time he smiles, she feels all the oxygen sucked out of the room. She forgets to breathe, lets him have the air.

Enough, to feed his fire.

 

* * *

 

 It takes her a long time to pick out the pair of heels she’ll wear when she steps on Roscoe Sweeney’s neck.

 It shouldn’t. Her closet is impeccably organized. Walls of shoes to choose from, but the criteria narrow her selection down quite a bit: dark, sturdy, heels with points sharp enough to sever an artery. She has several pairs that conceal weapons, but all of them look a little too vicious for the date night plans Matthew thinks they have.

He can’t know what they’ll actually do.

Not because he’ll turn back. She can’t even think it. Matthew would never turn away, not from her. He’ll follow her down that twisting path, silvered in moonlight, to the house at the end of the lane, through the shadows on the lawn. He’d follow her anywhere.

He’d never let her go alone.

The stilettos she finally settles on are black as midnight.

 

* * *

 

Its years later, in a dingy apartment in Hell’s Kitchen when need and want and light finally converge.

Matthew Murdock leans against a kitchen counter and pulls out a knife.

He asks: “Who’s there?”

She hears every question she’s ever asked herself in the dark.

She answers: “Elektra.”

 


End file.
